


since the day i saw you ('till eternity)。

by stellarisms



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: 3 Sentence Fiction, 5 Sentence Fiction, Falling In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 08:59:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6073204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarisms/pseuds/stellarisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“See you tomorrow,” the Inquisitor says, smile as fanciful as the fluttering hope that fizzes and sparks when his mouth twitches and curls and she thinks oh, '/oh/, Creators, this man will truly be the end of me if I’m not careful,' “Cullen.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. conspiracy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a sudden burst in Productivity in the form called "falling headfirst into da hell" is...probably not the best way to return to writing, but-- oh well lmao
> 
> anyway (strums guitar) here's my cullavellan primer i guess??//////

Fate, thinks Lavellan’s First the instant she catches the Commander’s gaze, has a wicked sense of humor.

 

 _Don't you dare_ , warns the part of her that’s far more conscientious, far more cautious than she really should (ought to) be, _don’t you_ **_dare_ ** _._

 

“I can’t promise anything,” Maeve tells Cullen - the first words spoken to him directly, a beginning unto itself - and means it when she says, “but I’ll try my best.”

 

 


	2. assemble

 

They call it The War Table, a meeting place for the Inquisition’s advisors - and the Herald, of course.

 

But at the moment, fear-stricken by decisions yet to be made, Inquisitor Lavellan is at war within herself.

 

“Remember: even inaction is a choice,” Leliana’s life-hardened stare regards her from afar, “Inquisitor.”

 

“Take care in considering every word once your party arrive in Redcliffe,” Josephine reminds her with absolute graciousness, “Mistress Lavellan.”

 

It’s only when she hears Cullen’s voice above elevated heartbeats -- _for now,_ _let’s move our focus on the next operation for our foot soldiers, lest the Inquisitor won’t make it to Redcliffe’s gates to handle any negotiations or Rift-closing_ \-- that Maeve remembers how to put herself back together, inhale to exhale, furrowed frown to steadied smile.

 

 


	3. eyes meet

 

“Forgive me,” Cullen has the grace to look almost embarrassed.  “I doubt you came here for a lecture.

 

“No,” quips Maeve, unable to stop herself.  “But if you have one prepared, I’d love to hear it.”

 

And then, Cullen _laughs_.

 

“Another time,” Cullen tells her -- and Maeve swears there’s a hint of promise in that, in how Cullen’s eyes don’t dart for other destinations despite his chagrin, “perhaps.”

 

 


	4. practical

 

It-- means absolutely nothing, Maeve is sure of it.

 

It should be a useless trinket that she receives in commemoration of her twenty-fifth Name Day, especially when her reticent nature made it so her companions and advisers had little time to prepare.

 

But...it’s a gift, indeed, to have this small bottle of ‘stars’ strung on a silver cord left at her door in a box with a note Cullen’s stark manuscript:

 

_Inquisitor,_

 

_May this relieve your restless hands and your perpetual inclination for stargazing, even on nights when weather will not permit._

 

_Regards, Commander._

 

 


	5. influence

 

“Did you just,” Sera wrinkles her nose, “pull a Commander Stiff, Mae-V?”

 

“Did I?” It’s become a bit easier to keep up with Sera’s unique means of communication, now that Maeve knows it’s many tricks and ticks. “I hadn’t noticed.”

 

“Yep. Totally did.” Her entire visage transforms, molding around a full-faced smirk. “Totally doing it, too, I **told** Beardy so, knew it then, knew it now!”

 

“I think what Sera means,” interprets Dorian, addressing Maeve’s obvious puzzlement, “is that she put money into her belief you and Commander Cullen having relations, so to speak, and now--”

 

That, coupled with the Iron Bull’s booming _call it what it is, Dorian, our tough little Lavellan can take it - like she could take the Commander any way he asks her to,_ sets Maeve’s entire face aflame...ears, nose palm-covered nape of her neck and all.

 


	6. overpowering

 

 

Scents are the first thing Maeve notices about a new place.

 

It smells...established, the entirety of Skyhold, like a dusty forgotten tome tucked away in the corner of library shelves.

 

Though nothing smells better to Maeve than the aroma of fresh-brewed tea and crushed Embrium potpourri.

 

The faint scratching of pen to dog-eared documents and silent swiping of watercolor brush to blank canvas paper, the way her senses are both overwhelmed and brought to peace.

 

(And if anyone should hear their idle humming -- from Cullen at his desk, from her makeshift studio before a sofa dragged into an empty corner of his office -- may they too be soothed by the sight of two people in most considerate company.)

 

 


	7. shared secret

 

“Am I dreaming as I sit,” Cassandra asks, well into one of their impromptu midday reading sessions, “or did Cullen just pass by us and address you _by your first name_?”

 

“He does that,” answers Maeve, flipping to the next page of Varric’s latest and settling herself more comfortably against the solid surface of Cassandra’s back, “sometimes.”

 

“I,” starts Cassandra, sighs like she’s...longing for the right words to come to her, “expected that to be the way you referred to one another in more...private settings than this.”

 

“We’re not at a point where we’d need to consider that yet, Cassandra--” Across the garden, Maeve swears she sees Cullen sneeze as he hurries along to the battlements, has to hide her flushed face behind her book, “--yet.”

 


	8. whim

 

 

Ah, she...really shouldn’t have stayed out this late in the first place.

 

But the point is that she has, which means he has with her as well.

 

It’s a good enough reason(able excuse) for him to accompany her across the battlements and all the way up to the well-lit main tower, never mind that night soldiers are posted at every gate to observe and preserve the peace within Skyhold’s walls.

 

“Have a good night,” Cullen says, about to turn to depart when she-- grabs hold of the right sleeve of his overlarge coat-cloak, on some impulse that leaves him wide-eyed and looking back with a worried, “Inquisitor?”

 

“See you tomorrow,” Maeve says, smile as fanciful as the fluttering hope that fizzes and sparks when his mouth twitches and curls and she thinks oh, _oh,_ _Creators, this man will truly be the end of me if I’m not careful,_ “Cullen.”

 

 


	9. laced fingers

 

“Your hands,” Cullen observes while they’re resetting the chessboard for another game, “are...rather small.”

 

“Is that,” Maeve blinks, taken aback by suddenness rather than Cullen’s (to her, now, familiar) candidness where and when it counts, “a problem?”

 

“No, it’s not a pr-- I just, ah, couldn’t help but notice that detail...about you...”  Then, as if he’s been caught under the scrutiny of a Hinterlands bear, stutters out a rushed, “N-Not that I’m scrutinizing you, nor do I mean anything untoward by that, Maker knows I respect y--!”

 

“Cullen, it’s **fine** ,” Maeve bites her tongue to keep from letting a (fond, easy, carefree) giggle or two slip out.

 

She’ll have far more problems later tonight, thinking about how much larger _his_ fingers appear resting close to hers and how much she’d like him to feel for himself the smallness of her (hands) against hi(s)m.

 

 


	10. keeper

 

She sends letters to Keeper Deshanna, every month without fail.

 

Her latest details their transition from Haven to Skyhold -- what it took to get them there, the less than savory circumstances of construction -- as well as the more lighthearted tales of her companions’ recent antics in their excursions out West.

 

 _From the way she speaks of you,_ Cullen chuckles when he’s given the chance to read their latest correspondence, _one would think she were your mother bound by blood._

 

How ironic, Maeve muses, to hear that from the person she dreams of someday introducing to her ever-maternal Keeper as the reason she stands with the Inquisition.

 

How ironic, Maeve realizes, to consider that a possible future even now.

 

 


	11. signal

 

 _Call the signal,_ Maeve shouts to the new recruits frozen to the spot as Samson and his monstrous accompaniment, _for the rest of Haven to head to the Chantry._

 

 _Call the signal,_ Maeve slurs in some feeble attempt at speech when she slumps into the snow, when she at last sees the campfire lights further down the path, after what feels like an eternity of wandering through endless white, _to let the medics know we’re coming…_

 

 _Call the signal_ , a taut tenor floats overhead as Maeve is nestled close against red, brown, silver-swift protection, enveloping her and warming her from the outside-in, _and let them know M-- the Inquisitor is alive._

 


	12. dragged

 

 

When she sweeps in, wanting a space for solitude and silence, Cullen never thinks to stop her.

 

When she seeks out his counsel, searching for answers to questions which plague her thoughts late into the early morning hours, Cullen would always open his doors.

 

But, surely, that must be because he knows that if he were to drag himself up to her quarters and ask her to let him stay -- for however long he needed.

 

If she asks for any explanation at all, it’s a prompt for dialogue ( _Should I stay here, in case you--? Yes, that would be...very much appreciated._ ) and the unvoiced assurance that she is as reliable in these matters as she is their fearless, fight-fire-with-fire Inquisitor.

 

 


	13. oversight

 

He never imagined nor expected _this_ to interfere.

 

This was no inconvenience in the direct line of his Inquisition work, no burden of his past worsened over withdrawal and resistance over time.

 

But it was, truly, ironic to discover a soft-spoken silver-tongued elf could magic away his heart like this-- and that Cullen, for all his oversight, has no inclination to ask for it back.

 

 


	14. swamped

 

“Um,” the Inquisitor’s voice is muffled by the giant stack of laundry she has perched precariously in her arms.  “Help?”

 

Cullen does, by taking the entire folded bundle from her.

 

“I thought I might help the attendants with their work on my day off,” she explains when Cullen appears ready to scold her (as he was), “but I didn’t expect it to be...so much to carry.”

“We all have our burdens to bear,” Cullen remarks, even when he knows she knows it well - and softens, at her sympathetic gaze that, he suspects, sees far beyond what she can see.  “Some of us just choose to bear it without complaint.”

 

 


	15. hammer

 

“Josephine’s incorrect,” Maeve tuts while they circle the battlements together on a star-watching evening walk, “about how she described you once.”

 

“How so?” Cullen recalls the story from Maeve, how she asked the Antivan ambassador her take on their Inquisition members.

 

“You’re hardly a man who resembles a hammer,” Maeve says -- and when teeth show as she smiles, a telltale gleam in her eyes, Cullen braces for the worst.  “A proud warhound, perhaps, loyal as can be and gentler than he looks.”

 

Oh, Maker, but he couldn’t prepare for the rush of heat to his face -- or his stuttering ‘ _...thank you, I think’ --_ fast enough.

 

 


	16. uptight

 

Cullen...looks at her from across the main palace ballroom.

 

 _Need help?_   Maeve doesn’t hide her amusement well at times like these, perhaps because she has no idea how uncomfortable he is around these Orlesian nobles.

 

 _Very much so_ , he mouths in her direction, while a couple of masked nobles preen and fuss over the visible line of his stone-straight shoulders.

 

When Maeve appears, thankfully, she does send the crowding nobles to disperse -- and Cullen can finally let out the breath he’s been holding, now that she’s back at his side.

 

 

 


	17. massage

“You must have been in great need of something like this,” Maeve’s oil-dipped hands are blessedly cool, but they stall over Cullen’s pained noise from the edge of the couch, “Commander?”

 

 _That ,_ Cullen wants to say, instead of the contented grunt he lets out once Maeve continues her promised massage, _would be a terrible understatement._

 

“I...just find it hard to believe you haven’t done this before,” Cullen manages, because he’s too busy melting into her careful kneading hands to offer much else.

  
  


 


	18. gratitude

They’re...close enough as friends, he considers over his early morning run, for him to dare to dream of more, probably.

 

Friendship which blossoms in fighting times, camaraderie which carries farther than any letters of report sent back to Skyhold when she travels.

 

Love, thinks Cullen while ducking his head from no one in particular (or, perhaps, from his own senseless wish for something beyond the grip of her hand clasped in his as he helps her to stand), is a kind of generosity he does not deserve.

 


	19. unless

There is hesitation (a curious thing, indeed, from someone usually so full of self-imposed assurance) when Maeve allows them both a chance to walk away.

 

_I-If you need to--_

 

What, does she expect him to need time to think it over, reconsider **what** , exactly--?

 

It’s been almost a year that he's waited already, holding out for a chance to hold her like this, tell her and show her how much he’s longed to take those last few steps forward and kiss her until she’s leaning up to brush nose to nose and nestle herself into the space between his open arms like they were made to be here, meant to belong here, like this, and--

 

 _That_ , Maeve is grinning from ear to ear, gone with the hesitation that seizes when doubt creeps beneath the surface and already going in for another kiss, _was what I wanted._

 

 


	20. mirrored

 

(It’s what Cullen has wanted all this time, too, countless days spent daydreaming scenarios like a lovesick teenager and clinging to the smallest hints of her affection for him.

 

It’s what Cullen had, once upon a time, been afraid of opening himself up to -- again, after the first time juvenile infatuation ricocheted on his foolish, foolish heart and left him licking his wounds for years for it.  

 

It’s what Cullen discovers in the aftermath of their dizzying third first kiss, in the matching quiver of their fingertips twined with one another, in downturned lashes over freckled cheeks and wing-shaped vallaslin and a smile -- for him, _because_ of him, and he’s struck by the urge to press her pliant and pulling at his collar against the stone all over again -- and he couldn’t be gladder for the Inquisition than he is at this very moment.)

 


	21. whispers

There is talk, of course, from the minute the soldiers find them walking back to Cullen’s office hand in hand.

 

“Let them,” Maeve dismisses Leliana’s concerns over the War Table, touched as she is by Sister Nightingale’s attentiveness.  “They won’t change my mind, no sooner than anyone outside these walls.”

 

Josephine, unsurprisingly, **giggles** at the way Leliana sighs and relaxes her arm from around the hilt of her pocketed dagger.

 

Cullen, conversely, is too busy hiding his pleased little smile behind the guise of covering his mouth to clear his throat.

 


	22. that one (kind of) hug

She’s so _small_ , compared to him, that he could carry her around if he wanted, anywhere he wanted.

 

“You could carry me around on your back, even.” Maeve doesn’t smirk, not quite, but there’s a vicious curl to the left corner of her lips when she leans and sways in her seat and, sweet Maker, Cullen thinks he might be _sweating_ a bit. “Pick me up, toss me around, throw me down wherever you’d like, belly up and out of breath, ready to answer any command you’d--”

 

“Andraste’s _tits_ ,” Varric interrupts from across the table, insulated walls of the Roost making their companions’ scandalized shrieks and wild wolf-whistling echo in Cullen’s burning ears, “we definitely need to get you and Curly drunk more often!”

 


	23. concept

 

“I tend to work around a theme or an image,” Maeve intones with her head leaning on Cullen’s shoulder. “Most of my art, as Solas describes it, is...very ‘abstract’.”

 

“You must like experimenting with color too.” The sketchbook in Cullen’s lap is surprisingly heavy, a testament to how passionate she is about art.  “Hardly any black or white to speak of.”

 

“Hardly anything in life is,” she reminds him -- and, with an answering peck to her forehead, Cullen thinks on that for the rest of their evening.

 

 


	24. surprise kiss

 

It’s not often that Cullen is surprised by her.

 

Maeve is nothing if not deliberate in her actions, in her expressed thoughts; for all her aggressively impulsive bouts, she is an observer at heart and (Cullen remembers) shy as can be upon first meeting.

 

But when she corners him, has him pinned against the bookcase before he’s barely gotten out anything close to _it’s good to see you, how are you love, is everything alright_ , and she has such a ravenous **look** that all his startled protests and struggling fly right out the window, especially when her mouth seals over his.

 

“Let’s go up to the loft,” Maeve smiles, several minutes later, like she isn’t struggling for air like he is, and tugs him by the belt loops toward the ladder, “so I can spoil you a bit...it _is_ your Name Day, after all.”

 

Cullen is not often surprised by her...but when it happens, he’s always pleasantly surprised.

 

 


	25. inspire

 

 

If anyone were to ask Maeve Lavellan what inspired her to join the Inquisition, she would tell them, straightforward as can be: _Because the Inquisition stands for duty, responsibility, and justice...with or without anyone’s approval._

 

If anyone were to ask Maeve Lavellan what inspired her to continue the Inquisition’s efforts in the shadows, she would tell them, world-weary and resigned: _Because Thedas will need a fighting force to protect it soon enough...just not one that needs to be recognized outright._

 

And if anyone were to ask Maeve Lavellan Rutherford what inspired her love to grow, she would tell them, small smile and fond laugh: _Because I saw that man for who he was from the moment I met him, and he must have sensed as much...otherwise, he wouldn’t have gotten to know me just as well._

 


	26. voice

 

Her voice, when she speaks to diplomats and dissenters alike, stands at the ready to offer accordance, compromise, forthright disclosure.

 

Her voice, when she speaks among her Inquisition’s ranks and her treasured companions, lifts and lowers in lilting measures, likened by Cole and Sera as _a guardian, a mum, a damn good...whatever, I guess._

 

Her voice, when she speaks to Cullen (as his Inquisitor, as a friend, as a lover) has never failed to put his mind and heart to rest -- and, he suspects, as it always will.

 

 


	27. kiss me

She loves him, she really does.

 

Cullen indulges her with as much time as their busy schedules allow for, spoils her with praise that turns her pink to the tips of her ears, touches her with a level of respect that borders reverence.

 

(She has to remind him, sometimes, through her kisses like searing ice and unrelenting fire that she will not break under his hold, that she does not require his gentleness at all times, and that she enjoys when he kisses her without that unbreakable control and lets himself simply _fall._ )

 

 


	28. eager

Tonight, on the eve of their long-awaited victory, they’re granted the blessing of time.

 

No need to hurry, no need to rush, no need to slip away for a stolen tryst between locked supply closet walls or a quick touch-and-go operation waiting for the others to arrive in the War Room.

 

And yet, she still begs for urgency, still writhes and keens over his fleeting touches like it’s their first time all over again.

 

And yet, she still grinds against him like she can’t feel how much he’s aching for her, distracts him with how she whines and arches up for _more, harder, please, ma vhenan, want you inside me now, fill me up and claim me and take me, love, I need you,_ and she’s so damned **eager** , so different when they’re like this, compared to when she wears the garb and the mask of Inquisitor Lavellan for the public eye--

 

 _And may they never have the pleasure,_ Cullen thinks as he spreads her thighs apart and has his head pointedly shoved between them, _of knowing what a sight she is when that mask and her clothes come off._

 

 


	29. wedding plans

 

“...Marry me,” Cullen blurts, struck by the impulse and unable to stop himself.

 

“What?” Maeve squawks, so loud it’s audible over the stray mabari’s enthusiastic barking.

 

For three terrifying beats of silence, Cullen is sure she’ll say no.

 

(Even when she takes his hand, even when she smiles up at him through her growing fringe and gives her Elvhen vows, he’ll still be in disbelief she told him _yes_.

 

Even when she stands before him in the more formal ceremony, after Halamshiral becomes a nightmarish memory and her gloved hand takes his to speak those vows again, he can’t believe his luck in finding -- and marrying -- the love of his life.)

 

 


	30. our song

This home they’ve built together, Maeve thinks, reminds her of a song she’s heard a lifetime ago.

 

 _Be certain in need,_ she hums the tune to herself while she bustles about in her studio to the distant sound of Cullen chasing Winnie around the front yard in an attempt to coax him into the wooden bath, _and the path will emerge to a home tomorrow._

  
 _And time will again,_ her airy cadence calls to clear open skies when she’s at last done with her Inquisition group portrait and emerges from the house to find their dog hopping around her sheepish husband grinning up at her from the grass, _be the joy it once was._


End file.
